I would like all of you in the blogosphere to put out good thoughts for a good friend of mine, who is getting surgery today for her thyroid cancer.

My friend @Suminycricket has been one of my best friends since we were 13 years old. She’s a devoted friend who always makes me laugh, and an excellent auntie to Owl.

Back in November she shot me an email, saying

“I’m writing because I thought you’d be interested to know: I have a goiter. I kid you not! At first I thought I was undergoing an unplanned sex-change, but apparently it is my thyroid. I’ve named the goiter Henry.”

We spent some time joking about Henry, but then in January she sent me an email sympathizing with me over the loss of my cat, and then casually throwing in, “Also, I just found out today that I have thyroid cancer! It sounds awful, but is one of the most curable types around with a near 100% survival rate, so really it’s not so bad.”

While I and her husband and her mother and MY mother freaked out, my friend was sending me hilarious text messages about the Henry saga.

Then she got double-whammy news – Henry had a mate, they both had to be surgically removed, and when things were done, she wouldn’t have a thyroid any more. And the surgery? Scheduled for two days before her birthday.

So when I got this email, I knew that I couldn’t let her down:

“Will you write me a hilarious poem about thyroid cancer? I was trying to come up with a short poem, and the best I could come up with was “happy birthday to me, I now am cancer free.”

It was a tall order, not the least because she had to suffer from a disease which is not easy to rhyme. Believe it or not, rhyming dictionaries were significantly unhelpful for words that rhyme with “goiter” or “Henry”.

Also, cancer is not the funniest of subject matter.

So the poem is pretty poor.

But it’s the best I could do, and hopefully it will give her a laugh.

The Ballad Of Henry

He started as only a bump,
A barely perceptible lump
And you said, “This is strange,
what is causing this change?
My neck is increasingly plump!”

But then it increased in its span
and you said “now I look like a man!”
It continues to grow,
and it’s starting to show,
I think I should go for a scan.”

The doc said “it’s good to not loiter,
but I can tell from my reconnoiter
It’s under your hyoid
on top of your thyroid
So likely it’s only a goiter.”

“A goiter,” you said, “well that’s fine.
I’ll just have to take iodine.
I’ll eat lots of kelp,
and I’m sure that will help.”
But Henry had other designs.

Poor Henry, he liked you a lot.
Your gland was just such a nice spot.
He meant you no harm
but the docs got alarmed
when they saw all the friends he had brought.

The doctors would not let things rest
til they put you through all sorts of tests
Then they said, “here’s the answer!
It turns out it’s cancer!”
“Well, that’s fucking great,” you professed.

“This cancer’s not bad,” they opined
“In fact, it is often benign.
And quick radiation
Will end Henry’s vacation
if it turns out he’s really malign.”

But Henry was far too prodigious
He was getting too big for his britches.
“We’ll take the whole gland
While Rob holds your hand
Before Henry can send out his bitches.”

And you said “are you sure this is so?
Is Henry really my foe?”
“You got too close when we
named this thing Henry
Trust us, he’s just got to go.”

So now you go under the knife
And Henry will give up his life.
One Henry is great
but not seven or eight
…So goodbye, Henry, fuck you.

If all of you could either tweet something miscellaneously hilarious to @suminycricket over the next few days, or leave a link in the comments, then that would be awesomesauce.

Of course the streets were full of people in green hats eating green popcorn, but there was a band on the stage with guitars and fiddles, and its name was “The Whiskey Dicks” which sounded promising.

But then we got close enough to hear the music.

Owl had a good time dancing, at least… in a marching stomp to the TOTALLY NOT CELTIC MUSIC.

I grew up singing Barra Macneils songs.

Our neighbour used to stand out in his backyard practising his bagpipe every afternoon.

When I was pregnant, I was obsessed with listening to Great Big Sea.

This music is important to me, and Vancouver can’t do it right EVEN IN A CELTIC FESTIVAL.

We decided to go to Tom Lee Music because there was supposed to be a sort of jam session with Mairi Rankin there. The problem was that it had started at 3, and by the time Owl woke up from his nap and we got down town, it was 4:30.

Happily, the people at front of house let us sneak in for half price, so we crept in for the last twenty minutes of the session.

Inside was a small group of people clapping and stamping their feet to real fiddle music – like a secret conclave of actual Irish/East Coasters, hiding from the Vancouver rabble in their shamrock hats while singing about colcannon and teaching each other Irish love songs.

Owl listened in fascination the whole time.

This morning, he took his two plastic hockey sticks and walked around rubbing them together telling me “I play fiddle, Mommy.”

The reason everyone is up and arms about is because a news anchor whose mother named her “Candy” (a good start right there) spend a lot of time bemoaning the consequences of the rapists’ sentencing, rather than talking about how what they did was wrong.

The clip pissed me off, of course, although I do think that it may be a good idea to emphasize the consequences of raping a girl – in case the teenage boys out there need a stronger motivation than simply “because it is wrong”.

“there is no doubt that what these teen boys did was wrong in that making mockery of someone they had sexual contact with over social media. Was it cold, was it callous, was it stupid…YES YES YES…but was it RAPE? NO. However, as a mother of young daughters and sons I am appaulled that no repermanding of the girl or her family is warranted. As a society, we have a moral obilgation to say something to a young girl or woman young or old who drinks to the point of not knowing what they are doing or sayng. To say that a 17 year old male is suppose to make the moral call and say ‘naw you are to drunk to know wht you are saying or doing” is a bit much.”

“men will be men. the more that is known the better. carry mace, dont get smashed at parties, dont walk down a dark alley by yourself. im a man and i realize that although i may not be looking for trouble walking home after a night at the bar, i better not get smashed in case trouble is looking for me.”

“What those teen boys did was bad, and they deserve to be punished, but where is her responsibility for herself? Apparently drunk women have no need to take responsibility for their poor choices, whereas drunk males will have to pay for their mistakes for the rest of their lives. So much for equality.”

“i am in no way condoning the actions of these juveniles and they should be punished. but acting like the girl had no part in her being in this situation undermines the importance of being responsible when consuming alcohol.”

“Oh, sure, what those boys did was wrong, but it’s the girl’s fault too, because she put herself in that situation.”

For all the people who want to talk about the consequences of being raped for a girl (something that gets almost NO coverage, and which I think really should be, because a lot of men clearly don’t get why it is considered to be such a big deal), there are people out there who want to talk about how stupid the girl was to be there in the first place.

And at first, I got mad.

Then I thought about it, and I realized, DUDE, they are totally right.

I mean, the girl went out and got DRUNK with GUYS around. Who does that? What normal teenage girl drinks around BOYS? Wasn’t she leading them on by simply being there, and then by becoming unconscious?

And why should we stop there?

Since the victim in the above case clearly is partially to blame for the consequences of her action, shouldn’t we be blaming MORE victims?

If you pitted the stupidest person at your work against a two year old, the moron who can’t do the simplest thing right would still probably come out ahead of the toddler every time.

So people without kids are pretty amused when we parents are totally blown away by our children doing simple things that even a dog could do, like identifying a ball or their own mother on cue.

But the thing is, when you’re looking at a tiny person and thinking “I MADE THAT,” then the fact that something you made can point to their own nose is incredibly exciting.

Even if you didn’t personally make the child (adoption, grandchild etc), the fact that this person couldn’t even hold up their own head a year or two ago makes the slightest achievement feel really momentous.

But to the rest of the world, we look like twits because we get so excited about our children accomplishing the most basic of skills, especially when they do so at developmentally normal ages.

I acknowledge this fact with apologies to all of the people out there who don’t get why I find this so exciting…

It was waaaaaaay better than last year. Much better organized, for one thing.

It also helped that we knew our way around this year, too, and didn’t try to take the elevators. Sure, the volunteer “minions” scolded us for going on the escalator but it meant we actually got to ENJOY COMICON.

George Takei wasn’t there this year, but do you know who WAS?

Christopher Lloyd, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, and… PATRICK STEWART.

Commander Owl Riker, ready to meet his Captain

I got Christopher Lloyd to sign my copy of Roger Rabbit, which was cool but I didn’t get much more time with him than I got with George Takei last year, so there doesn’t seem to be a real benefit to signing vs photo shoots.

PH tried to see Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, but he got there a full twenty minutes after Comicon opened and that was apparently TOO LATE.

We lunched down the road at a Qdoba, where I munched on a large plastic triangle in my burrito. They apologized, but did not offer me a refund or a fresh burrito. I ate it anyway.

We decided to skip napping Owl, hoping he would doze off in his stroller.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Instead, he flirted incessantly with some (childless) friends who were also down for the day.

Flirting may have happened on both sides

He also enjoyed the Storm Troopers, the Spider Men, and the Power Rangers. He was somewhat bemused by the bagpipe-playing Darth Maul.

He did nap eventually for about ten minutes, at, like, 4 pm.

But you know what? He had a blast, and we got more time to browse the comic book stands. Plus we had friends to hang out with this year, which was awesome.